Seduced by a view? A certain slant of light through a south-facing window? Well, I’ve felt it for a wood floor; the shape and size of an upstairs hall, the quality of window sills. I’ve imagined a whole life because of the way a front door looks – even before I open it.
House lust. It rises in the spring, which is why For Sale signs start popping up on front lawns along with the tulips. The days are longer, the sunshine stronger. Snow banks disappear. All of which makes it easier to enter into what I sometimes think of as the filmic (David Lean as director, of course) setting of your life. And maybe, too, spring house lust is the desire for a fresh start. We want to imagine ourselves living in a new way. Certainly at this time, for many it’s a desire to make a move – either to acquire a first house or to find a bigger one – before the anticipated jump in interest rates.
The question is whether it’s rational.
House lust can be dangerous. As a buyer, I have felt the infatuation kick in the minute I walk into a home. When I was younger, my then-husband and I would walk into a new house and if it spoke to us, I was soon seeing a scene of our three boys lining up their Lego ships in the basement. I could see family gatherings in the living room. I could imagine our friends coming for a party. Baking cookies in the oven. Having a bath. The film that un-spooled in my head had nothing to do with what a real estate agent said or whether the current homeowner baked bread minutes before the showing. “Ninety per cent of buyers have an immediate instinctual reaction to a house,” acknowledges one Toronto real estate agent.
We are living in a day and age when real estate is seen to be a right, not a privilege. And the danger is that when real-estate-entitlement culture takes hold, all of a sudden just owning a home isn’t enough. It becomes competition. — Financial expert and author Garth Turner
It’s like a romantic spark with a possible partner – you either feel it or you don’t. And if you feel it, well, hold on for the ride. Smitten by a Ceiling Height could be the title of my obsessive romance novel about tall, dark and handsome real estate.
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Investor Education:
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In his research for his work in neuroeconomics, Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, came across classic examples of “a weighting mistake” when people make real estate decisions. One study showed that if you gave people two houses to compare – a three-bedroom townhouse, say, in centre of town, that would entail no commute, versus a four-bedroom house (with extra bathroom) in the suburbs that would necessitate a 45-minute drive to work – most would make the right decision.
They would give proper weighting to the negative variable of the commute – but only if they made the decision quickly, he explains. “The more people spent thinking about housing options, the more likely they were to choose the house that’s farther away. They come up with all sort of reasons why they should buy it. Grandpa Joe will visit. My brother will come in the summer. That extra bedroom, even though you may use it only twice a year, starts to outweigh the problem of having a commute, which is known to have a significant impact on lifestyle happiness.”
It’s called confabulation, Mr. Lehrer points out. “We love inventing reasons, so give us more time and whether it’s a house or a box of cereal, we’ll think all day about why option A is better than option B. And with real estate, we tend to confabulate in one direction – more space.”
